Romney's Right: It Is Worse Now

Politics: The Obama administration recently created a new White House post charged with rapidly responding to unfavorable stories. They could have spared the taxpayers $72,500, since the mainstream press is already doing that job free of charge.

A case in point is the media's rapid and fierce response to Mitt Romney's claim that President Obama's economic policies have made the country worse off. Rather than investigate the claim, they've made it their mission to debunk it.

Reporters are challenging Romney at every stop, demanding that he square his talking point with the fact that, gosh, GDP is growing and the number of workers with jobs seems to be growing, too. And, look, the stock market is higher than when Obama took office. And so, too, are corporate profits. What right does he have to make such outlandish claims?

But — can you believe it? — Romney won't stop! CBS News' latest dispatch even complained in the headline that "Romney repeats disputed charge, says again that Obama made recession worse." Sure, they noted, the economic numbers "aren't stellar" but they "clearly paint a picture that shows improvement from a very weak starting point." So there.

To be sure, Romney muddied his message a bit, seeming to backtrack at one point in response to a reporter challenging his claim. And, to be completely accurate, Obama hasn't made the recession worse, since it was almost over by the time he got into office and before any of his policies had a chance to make a real impact.

But it's clear he's made the recovery worse. And there are, in fact, many economic indicators that are demonstrably worse since Obama took office. Here are a few we've noted in this space before:

There are 2 million fewer private-sector jobs now than when Obama was sworn in, and the unemployment rate is 1.5 percentage points higher.

 There are now more long-term unemployed than at any time since the government started keeping records.

 The U.S. dollar is more than 12% weaker.

 The number of Americans on food stamps has climbed 37%.

 The Misery Index (unemployment plus inflation) is up 62%.

 And the national debt is about 40% higher than it was in January 2009.

In fact, reporters who bother to look will discover that Obama has managed to produce the worst recovery on record.

By this point in the Reagan recovery after the 1981-82 recession, for example, unemployment had been knocked down to 7.4% from a peak of 10.8%, and quarterly GDP growth averaged a screaming 7%.

Politics: The Obama administration recently created a new White House post charged with rapidly responding to unfavorable stories. They could have spared the taxpayers $72,500, since the mainstream press is already doing that job free of charge.

A case in point is the media's rapid and fierce response to Mitt Romney's claim that President Obama's economic policies have made the country worse off. Rather than investigate the claim, they've made it their mission to debunk it.

Reporters are challenging Romney at every stop, demanding that he square his talking point with the fact that, gosh, GDP is growing and the number of workers with jobs seems to be growing, too. And, look, the stock market is higher than when Obama took office. And so, too, are corporate profits. What right does he have to make such outlandish claims?

But — can you believe it? — Romney won't stop! CBS News' latest dispatch even complained in the headline that "Romney repeats disputed charge, says again that Obama made recession worse." Sure, they noted, the economic numbers "aren't stellar" but they "clearly paint a picture that shows improvement from a very weak starting point." So there.

To be sure, Romney muddied his message a bit, seeming to backtrack at one point in response to a reporter challenging his claim. And, to be completely accurate, Obama hasn't made the recession worse, since it was almost over by the time he got into office and before any of his policies had a chance to make a real impact.

But it's clear he's made the recovery worse. And there are, in fact, many economic indicators that are demonstrably worse since Obama took office. Here are a few we've noted in this space before:

There are 2 million fewer private-sector jobs now than when Obama was sworn in, and the unemployment rate is 1.5 percentage points higher.

 There are now more long-term unemployed than at any time since the government started keeping records.

 The U.S. dollar is more than 12% weaker.

 The number of Americans on food stamps has climbed 37%.

 The Misery Index (unemployment plus inflation) is up 62%.

 And the national debt is about 40% higher than it was in January 2009.

In fact, reporters who bother to look will discover that Obama has managed to produce the worst recovery on record.

By this point in the Reagan recovery after the 1981-82 recession, for example, unemployment had been knocked down to 7.4% from a peak of 10.8%, and quarterly GDP growth averaged a screaming 7%.

Under Obama's recovery, we're stuck with 9.1% unemployment, and an economy that's managed to eke out an average of just 2.8% growth since the recession ended two years ago.

Meanwhile, 70% of small businesses report that they've delayed hiring thanks to economic uncertainties, and more than three-quarters say the country is still in a recession.

And a forthcoming report by Stanford University economist John Taylor finds that the stimulus was a bust, noting that while backers claim the economy "would have been worse" had Obama not stepped in, "the results do not support that view."

Even the Wall Street Journal's news pages — which can hardly be described as right wing — have managed to discover what's been going on. "Across a wide range of measures," the paper noted, "the economy's improvement since the recession's end in June 2009 has been the worst, or one of the worst, since the government started tracking these trends after World War II."

No doubt the rest of the news media are busy trying to explain this away, or blame it all on George W. Bush. But Romney would do himself, and the country, a lot of good by sticking to his message. Whatever the media might think, at least it has the virtue of being true.

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